The Large Scale Immersive Audio Experiment will provide an installation of Duran Audio Intellivox DSP controlled Beam Steering Loudspeakers in the open air at four corners of Goldsmiths College Green. The content will be spatialized using Illustrious’ 3D–Audioscape software platform. A training workshop and seminar for students will be given by Illustrious’ Martyn Ware, providing the necessary knowledge for them to create their 3D Immersive content.

Working together to bring this exciting new medium of expression to Goldsmiths, Duran Audio and Illustrious will benefit from the creative collaboration between Goldsmiths Screenschool and Sound Practice Research and the technologies each company is supplying in this ground breaking project.

The results of the Experiment run in Goldsmiths College Green from 22 October September until 7 November.

A Picture of Us? Identity in British ArtGraves Gallery, Sheffield, 16 September – 5 December 2009posted 18/9/2009

A Picture of Us? at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield, features art selected by, amongst others, Wayne Hemingway, Kate Rusby, Martyn Ware, Anthony D’Offay, Danuta Reah and artists including Lisa Cheung and Hew Locke. Martyn has chosen Derrick Greaves’ ‘Venice in the Rain’ for the show.

The show runs from 16 September until 5 December. Full details are on the Graves Gallery website.

Future of Sound at i-Design 09Old Cnema, University of Westminster, London, 24 September 2009posted 15/9/2009

For a third year Martyn Ware will be hosting a Future of Sound panel at the i-Design Conference at the London Design Festival next week. His guests will be David Bickerstaff, Sophie Clements and Paul Dawson. See the full schedule on the i-Design website.

Downloads of the Fanta Stealth Sound System (the ‘secret’ ringtones for teenagers that adults can’t hear, sound designed by Illustrious) have now passed 300,000. The project is up for a Cannes Lion award next week.

Red Bull Music Academyposted 22/6/2009

Illustrious are teaming up with visual digital artists D-Fuse and composer Si Begg to create an immersive 360 degree sound and vision installation for touring with Red Bull Music Academy – starting in September. Watch this space ...

Fanta Stealth Sound Systemposted 22/6/2009

FSSS (co-created by Illustrious Company and Ogilvy) has won a Silver Honour in the Creative Circle Awards 2009 for Best Mobile application – the FSSS free download link ... Fanta Download ...is now featured on over 40 million packs in Europe.

‘La Prima Donna’ is the new audio-visual performance installation by Hellcat Productions featuring the characters from Caryl Churchill's ‘Top Girls’. The piece combines choreographed dance, performative gender and period-shifting costume to explore the contorted ideals of feminine beauty. The piece features live DJing through state of the art 3D surround sound technology invented by the Illustrious Company.

Hellcat Productions, founded by designers Katharine Heath and Eleanor Wdowski, previously performed ‘Lift and Separate’ at the V&A: Opera segued into pop as the five Hellcat performers danced and vogued in mini crinolines.

It’s finally happening! Illustrious have nearly finished composing their huge outdoor 3-Dimensional soundscape embodying the sonic essence of London – featuring recordings made by various community groups, schools, ethnic associations, reminiscence groups and youth clubs. This will form a one hour looping installation, which will engage the many visitors to the square in a unique way.

The launch event, featuring a Westminster choir, is at 11am on 4 June, and the soundscape will play daily from 9am until 7pm. It is expected that over 2 million people will witness this installation.

There is also an informational exhibition located in Westminster Reference Library, on St Martin's Street south of Leicester Square, which explains the project in more detail and offers an interactive experience for visitors to engage. The exhibiton will run until 30 June and is open daily from 10am until 8pm, Saturdays 10am until 5pm, and closed Sundays.

Illustrious has created a world-first – a three dimensional outdoor soundscape to accompany the launch of the acclaimed Tim Winton’s new novel ‘Breath’. Installed under Hungerford Bridge on London’s Southbank, the soundscape feature Tim Winton reading extracts from the book, whilst immersing the listener in an ultra-real seascape of crashing surf, breathing, snoring and yet more surf. Over 20,000 people witnessed the soundscape during the weekend of 16 and 17 May.

‘It's BRILLIANT! I love the building and crescendo of the first half with the wipeout. The snoring is a stroke of genius, really adds atmosphere and pulls in into a different part of the novel, which is great. The different depths and moods of the ocean is fabulous, sometimes it sounds like the blood rushing in your ears (which is perfect)- it'll really pull through people when they walk through it. Love the repetition of breath at the end too. Very pleased’. Lee Dibble – Macmillan Books

Martyn talks about the early days of the Human League, favourite hardware, and musical influences, on the Bonedo music portal.

Is Studio Recording Killing Music?Martyn chairs discussion of what it is a record producer actually does, 17 February 2009posted 29/4/2009

Sparked on by a love of classic record producers such as Phil Spector, Joe Meek, and Sam Phillips, Bowers & Wilkins got together a panel of musical experts to see what they had to tell us about music and sound reproduction.

At the head of the table, and chairing the meeting was Martyn Ware, talking with Steve Levine, KK, Simon Gogerly, Jim Irvin and Steve Sasse.

This and other discussions, in an ongoing occasional series, can be found on the Bowers & Wilkins website.

SoundlIfe London in the Newsposted 20/4/2009

SoundLife London, the Future of Sound installation scheduled to run in Leicester Square Gardens for ten days in June, was in the news today.

Bodies of the FutureTalking Science at The Science Festival, 15 April 2009posted 1/4/2009

What do we want our bodies to look like in the future? How will technology shape our relationship with the physical environment and the multifaceted identities we create? Martyn Ware is to take part in a discussion at Edinburgh Napier University, along with Stelarc (Brunel University), Andrew Shoben (Greyworld), Dr Jonathan Freeman (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Michelle Kasprzak (Scottish Arts Council). The panel will explore the shifting boundaries between the technologically adapted body and the concept of self and the sense of place.

Illustrious is creating a three-dimensional soundscape to accompany the new F1 exhibition at the Science Museum in London.

Twenty innovative by-products of Formula 1 will show how sophisticated composite materials and rigorous pit-stop strategies devised by British teams are currently applied to improve safety and efficiency in our hospitals, homes and working places.

This is expected to be the first of several soundscaping opportunites within the Science Museum over the next few years.

Creatmosphere and Illustrious are recreating a large-scale immersive outdoor light and sound installation called Breathing Trees, initially commissioned for the festival Arbres et Lumieres in 2006 in Geneva.

Laurent Louyer, creative director of Creatmosphere, got the idea for the piece when looking at the trees from a distance; he realised that they represented giant upside down lungs. He says: "I thought it would be a great to make these incredibly impressive trees come alive and breathe with light. I then decided to add in sound thinking that together, and at this scale, they would provoke feelings and emotions strong enough to make us rethink the basic human condition - on how we're all deeply dependant on what trees give us - oxygen."

Using LED-dimming color changing technology, the fittings will be displayed up in trees to ensure that light is moving all the way through to the branches and foliage. Along with an integrated triggered 3D sound installation, the trees will actually look and sound like they are breathing. The piece will not only have an aesthetic beauty but will also raise socio political questions around environmental issues of pollution and climate change.

Carnivorous art, man-animal-machine hybrids, mechanical drawing machines, subliminal installations, pole dancing robots, light sculptures and cybernetics are just some of the exhibits to be found at Kinetica Art Fair, the UK's first art fair dedicated to kinetic, robotic, sound, light and time-based art which opens in London on Friday 27 February. To be held at P3, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS.

Kinetica Art Fair is developed by Kinetica Museum in partnership with P3 and supported by the Contemporary Art Society.

SoundLife London In Leicester SquareA world-first piece of public sound art where the people are also the artists.
4–14 June 2009posted 9/2/2009

SoundLife London is a unique sound composition created especially for Leicester Square Gardens by Martyn Ware. The work is being co-ordinated by Arts Co and supported by Westminster City Council. This project will reveal the amazing three-dimensional sound world that surrounds us at all times in the most fascinating and diverse city in the world.

The composition will consist of an hour long, looped 'soundscape' which will inhabit the entire space of the Leicester Square gardens over a 10-day period - at times manifested as a sort of ghostly activity moving and tracking visitors around the space, at others a subtle and ambient musical composition.

The audio clips for SoundLife London will be collected through an outreach and education programme called Sounds of the City consisting of workshops with eight Westminster community groups.

Martyn Ware has been invited to speak at the 14th Annual Streetscapes Conference. The conference will take place at The Hatton, London EC1 on 31 March and will consider methods for enhancing streetscapes and public spaces and the impact that a successful public realm can have on urban environments.

The event will also coincide with the launch of this year's PLACEmaking publication, which we publish in association with the Academy of Urbanism who are also supporting this year's event.

The conference is the foremost annual gathering for those concerned with designing, managing and maintaining public spaces, aims to generate discussions about new and innovative ways to develop public places and provides an annual focus for our work on public realm issues.